Trump Gloats About “Making a Fortune” While Americans Suffer

Donald Trump is annoyed that he can’t celebrate the massive profits oil companies are making from the war he started in the Middle East. Left to his own devices, Trump would rejoice in the hundreds of billions of dollars generated by soaring oil prices — if not for the fact that it comes at the expense of ordinary Americans, who are now paying about 40 percent more every time they fill up for gas than they were before Trump began bombing Iran nearly three months ago.

We know this because of Trump’s endless dedication to saying the silent part out loud. Speaking to Fox News’ Sean Hannity on Thursday, Trump chuckled that because much less oil was coming out of the Middle East, “people are finding other places to buy oil, like Texas.” Trump added: “So I don’t want to say we’re making a fortune, you understand that? Because if I say that, they’re going to say ‘oh, he’s forgetting the little man with the $4 gas.’

The juxtaposition between “making a fortune” and the “little man” suffering at the gas station highlights how obtuse Trump and his allies have become in their economic messaging. Their response to the damage caused by Trump’s policies is not to roll back those policies, or even to appear sympathetic to their effects. This is to express their total indifference to the suffering of the American people. At the same time, Trump is obsessively focused on his real priorities: enriching himself and his family, and creating gaudy monuments to himself, like a new ballroom at the White House and a triumphal arch that will stand in the middle of Washington, DC. In response to a reporter’s question about who would celebrate the arch, Trump pointed to himself and replied “me.”

Trump twice won the White House on a message of economic populism, promising at his inauguration in 2025 that he would “bring prices down.” Today he sings a very different tune, with a message that harks back to the apocryphal words wrongly attributed to French Queen Marie Antoinette: “Let them eat cake.”

Speaking to reporters last Monday, Trump said: “I’m not thinking about the financial situation of the American people. I’m not thinking about anyone. I’m thinking about one thing: We can’t let Iran have a nuclear weapon. That’s all.” He also said concern about Americans’ financial suffering would not be a factor in reaching a deal with Iran “even a little bit.”

Under normal political circumstances, the Republican Party would do well to distance itself from Trump’s insensitivity. But the GOP has become a hollow operation, primarily concerned with catering to Trump’s cult of personality. On Saturday, Trump scored a major victory against party critics when Louisiana Sen. Bill Cassidy came in third in his party’s Senate primary, losing to a Trump-backed candidate. Cassidy’s defeat underscores a lesson that Trump has repeatedly taught the Republican Party over the past decade: There is no future in the party for anyone who defies his will.

So, rather than distancing themselves from Trump’s “let them eat cake” message, Republicans are embracing the president’s self-defeating rhetoric. On Thursday, Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan told CNN that oil prices were “going down until we had to deal with this situation, but, you know, that’s life, it’s about … the world that we live in.”

It’s hard to imagine a harsher response to economic struggles than “c’est la vie.” Beyond rising oil prices, there is a climate of growing pessimism about the economy. As The New York Times reported Sunday:

For Mr. Trump, the country’s political and economic tensions are laid bare in a series of downbeat reports released over the past two weeks. Last month, consumer prices rose to their highest level in about three years, outpacing workers’ wages, while businesses saw costs rise at a rate not seen since 2022.

Americans are accumulating more and more debt. Families are saving less. And a key measure of consumer confidence fell to an all-time low this month. The anxiety has been reflected in recent political polls, which have recorded broad public disapproval of Mr. Trump’s handling of the economy.

To the extent that there is good economic news, it is unevenly distributed. Retail sales are robust, but only because the wealthy are benefiting from a bullish stock market. As The New York Times notes: “Low- and middle-income households are bearing the brunt of slowing wage growth and rising prices.”

Trump, his family and his acolytes belong to the rarefied club of the ultra-rich who thrive under current conditions. As Bloomberg reported Thursday: “President Donald Trump’s latest financial disclosures show that he or his investment advisers made more than 3,700 trades in the first quarter, a flurry totaling tens of millions of dollars and involving major companies that have connections to his administration. » The news site notes that Wall Street insiders “expressed surprise at the trading volume.”